


Metamorphosis

by 911xtarlos



Series: We Could Be Heroes Verse [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Bisexual Steve Harrington, Boys In Love, Gay Billy Hargrove, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Parental Steve Harrington, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 21:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21152144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/911xtarlos/pseuds/911xtarlos
Summary: A look into the changed Billy Hargrove





	Metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for this update being later than normal but here it is

The upside down did shit to you. Anyone who had come into contact with it knew that. Billy had been trapped there for months and physically he was as okay as he could be. But no one knew what had changed inside of him. 

Steve had prepared himself and the kids for what was going to come as Billy recovered. He warned them that the Billy they knew probably wasn’t going to be the Billy that they pulled out of the upside down. So far Billy had proved that to be true. He was still an asshole, they would have been worried if he wasn’t, but he was more gentle. He openly cared for Steve and the kids. He was nicer. But there was still a far away look in his eyes that worried Steve. Now that Billy was home and not strung out on painkillers, he was semi-aware of what had happened to him. He’d even confided in Steve that he didn’t quite feel like himself.

Steve thought he’d prepared himself well for the changes he was bound to see in Billy. But nothing, no demodog or any other interdimensional monster, could have prepared him for two Hargrove siblings, a pair of scissors, and a pile of blonde curls on his bathroom floor. 

*****

_ Snip _

Another tuft of curly blonde hair fell to the floor. Billy contorted his neck trying to see all of his hair in the mirror. It was almost painful to cut it off. His mullet had been his staple. His one small act of rebellion against Neil. Much of it had been cut off at the hospital, too matted with blood and God knows what else to be salvaged. It was left his curls uneven, choppy and longer in some places than others. He hated it. So he decided to just cut it all off. It was just hair. It would grow back eventually. 

“Billy what are you doing?”

He hadn’t closed the door completely behind him and now Caroline was leaning against the door jamb, arms crossed over her chest. 

She looked so much healthier when he wasn’t looking at her under fluorescent hospital lights. Her skin was tanned and her hair had been washed recently, leaving her blonde waves soft and fluffy, the same way his had been before it got curlier as he got older. 

“What does it look like I’m doing shitbird?”

“It looks like you’re trying to scalp yourself. Why are you cutting your hair?”

“They cut most of it off at the hospital anyway. It was all uneven and I hated it.”

His shoulders slumped and the scissors clattered into the sink.

“Well you’re gonna hurt yourself. Give me the scissors and sit down.”

Billy passed her the scissors handle first and flipped the lid of the toilet down.

“Do you even know how to cut hair?” He groused.

“Actually yes. I used to cut my own hair. Now shut up and sit down.”

He sat down and crossed his arms.

She flicked his ear and said, “I can’t see you but I know you’re making a grumpy face.”

“You know nothing.”

“Oh my god you’re such a kid.”

Billy rolled his eyes but kept quiet as she worked on his hair.

She worked in silence, the only sound the soft snick of the scissors. That is until the door creaked open the rest of the way and Steve’s voice filled the small space.

“What the hell?”

Caroline and Billy both jumped, the open blade of the scissors slid against the back of his neck.

“Shit!” His hand clapped over the wound. It wasn’t deep but it hurt like a son of a bitch.

He heard Caroline moving behind him, then a soft cloth being pressed over his fingers. He moved his hand to let her put pressure on the wound and turned himself enough that he could see Steve.

“Hey dumbass, maybe don’t sneak up on the teenager with scissors. She could have taken my head off.”

“I doubt she could have cut your head off with scissors-” Steve started but cut himself off when he saw the look Billy was giving him. 

“I’m sorry,” he looked down at his feet sheepishly and Billy felt bad for snapping.

“Hey Caroline, can I talk to Steve for a sec?”

“Yeah. I’m done anyway.”

She pulled the cloth away from the cut at his neck and took it away with her to be washed.

Steve knelt down in front of Billy and propped his elbows on his knees. 

“Why did you cut your hair?”

“They cut most of it off at the hospital anyway. And it didn’t feel like me anymore. I’m different, I guess I thought my hair should be too. Does it look bad? I was doing it myself but Caroline found me and took over.”

“No it looks good.”

Steve reached up and brushed his hand over the side of his hair. 

“Come look.”

Billy moved the stand in front of the mirror, Steve behind him, chin hooked over his shoulder.

Caroline had cut the sides as short as she could get it with scissors, but had left the top longer so his hair still had some curl. It wasn’t perfect, some parts were still uneven, some places longer, others shorter. It looked like someone had taken his hair apart and patched it back together the best they could. Just like him.

“It’s not bad.”

“As El would say, ‘Bitchin’.”

Billy huffed a laugh and leaned back into Steve, “Yeah bitchin’.”

*****

In the middle of May, a little over two months since Billy had been released from the hospital, while the rest of the country had moved into warmer, spring temperatures, Hawkins was stuck in a perpetual wintery hell. 

He sent the kids off to school bundled up in jackets, especially Will, who ran colder after his run in with the mindflayer. 

Steve was sick and tired of the winter weather. He hated that his fingertips froze just in the walk from his car into the store. He hated that Keith bitched about the cost of running the heat for too many days in a row, so he and Robin were always forced to work in coats and sweaters because of course the heat only ran on the days Keith worked. 

He and the other kids had begun to envy Max and Caroline, whose California blood made them impervious to the cold, with the exception of Caroline’s hands and feet, which felt like icicles no matter the time of year. 

Steve had always assumed that Billy was the same way as his sisters. That’s why even in the dead of Indiana winter he’d worn jeans and a button down open to his belly button, covered only by his denim jacket that was definitely not warm enough.

That’s why Steve hadn’t been expecting the kids to come storming upstairs and burst into his bathroom shouting at him while he was getting ready. They’d begged him and Billy to take them to a theatre a few towns over to see  _ Top Gun _ and they’d both finally given in because hello, Tom Cruise.

“Steve, Steve!”

“What? What? What happened? Who died?” Steve asked, hairbrush clattering to the floor. 

“Something’s wrong with Billy?” Dustin huffed.

“What’s wrong with him? What happened?” Steve felt a hot ball of dread building in his belly. 

“He’s wearing clothes Steve.”

The dread quickly dissipated.

“You little shit, I thought something was actually wrong.” He cuffed Dustin on the side of the head. “What do you mean? Billy wears clothes all the time.”

“This is a crisis! He’s wearing real clothes. His tits aren’t out Steve!”

“Dude,” Lucas elbowed him in the ribs. “Really though Steve all of his body parts are covered by his clothes.”

“He’s wearing a fucking sweater. I think someone opened another gate and Billy has another doppelganger or something. When has Billy Hargrove ever worn a sweater?” Mike added.

“Language Michael. Max, Caroline, help me out here. There’s nothing wrong with Billy.”

“Steve last time Billy wore long sleeves he was possessed,” Max said.

“Billy has always hated being covered up. He was always shirtless when we were little. I actually think he was naked most of the time when we were little,” Caroline said thoughtfully.

“Okay I’m gonna need photographic evidence of that. Let me just go downstairs and talk to him.”

Steve headed downstairs, the kids huddled close behind him. When he reached the living room, there stood Billy Hargrove, in a fucking sweater, sucking on a fucking cherry flavored sucker, his new subsitute for cigarettes.

“Hey baby,” Steve said walking up and wrapping an arm around him. “You feeling okay?”   


“Yeah why?”

“Well the kids were kinda concerned, especially Dustin, because you're wearing a sweater, to quote him, ‘Your tits aren’t out’.”

“Oh my god you little fucker.”

Dustin ducked behind Caroline,

“You’re not using me as a shield,” she shrieked. “You dug your grave go get in it.”

“It’s fucking cold outside Henderson. I’m not possessed I promise.”

He turned to Steve.

“I run cold after the mind flayer. That’s it.”

“See I told you,” Steve said to Dustin.

“You have to admit, my concerns were valid.”

Billy rolled his eyes. “Are you little shits ready? I don’t want to miss the movie.”

Steve, Billy and the boys piled into Steve’s beamer. Billy had given Caroline, who had just gotten her license and wanted to drive everywhere, permission to follow them in the Camaro with the girls.

Billy hadn’t been cleared to drive yet, so Steve slid into the driver’s seat. As they drove out of Hawkins, Steve took Billy’s hand in his and kissed his knuckles. Billy turned his head to grin at him.

“Get a room,” Dustin said, chorused by gagging from Mike and Lucas.

Billy took a crumpled up napkin from Steve’s cupholder and threw it at them over his shoulder. He looked up in the rearview mirror to make sure it hit him and caught Will smiling at him. Billy winked at him.

*****

Billy’s entire existence had left him with scars, both physical and emotional. He’d always born his scars with pride. His scars were a symbol of all that he’d survived. His scars made him who he was.

But the look of fear and sadness on Max’s face the first time she’d seen the scars the mind flayer left behind changed his mind. He began to hide them from her, because he was her big brother. He was supposed to protect her, not scare her. And his scars and the fact that he should have been dead but was standing right in front of her scared her to death. So he hid, because he never wanted to make her feel that way.

The one person he never had to hide from was Steve. Steve had just as many scars as he did and on bad nights they would lay in bed and talk about and kiss each others scars like somehow their words and their lips would heal them.

“How’d you get this one?” he asked on one of those nights, brushing his thumb across the faint scar under Steve’s bottom lip.

“I fell off my bike when I was like ten. I was at Tommy’s house because my parents weren’t home and they had to take me to the hospital. I got three or four stitches.”

Billy leaned in and kissed the scar.

“How did you get this one?”

Steve traced the long scar on Billy’s left forearm with a finger.

“Neil pushed me down the stairs a couple of months before we moved. I landed on it funny and broke it. The bone was through the skin. I had to have surgery to fix it.”

Steve liften Billy’s arm to his lips and pressed a series of kisses over it.

“How about this one?” Billy asked of the jagged scar on Steve’s hip.

“Tommy got pissed at me. Punched me in the stomach and he had a ring on. Sliced me open pretty good.”

“Dick,” Billy murmured before kissing it.

“This one?” Steve followed the jagged lines of a scar across Billy’s ribcage.

“Got in a fight at a party. Kid broke a beer bottle and sliced me with it. He went to jail I think.”

“Damn.”

The pattern went on all night, listening to stories of scars, old and new.

Steve never asked about the starburst scars on Billy’s shoulders that webbed out down his arms. 

Billy never asked about the scar just about Steve’s eyebrow that he knew was from him.

Steve always stopped when he reached Billy’s biggest scar. The one that left a dent in the center of his chest. The one that was still pink and raw even after months. The one that should have killed him. When Steve ran out of scars to kiss, he put his forehead to the scar at the center of Billy’s chest. He would stay there for a long time, whispering words Billy couldn’t hear. Almost every time, he would lift his head to show Billy the tears in his big brown eyes. Billy would hold him close and kiss the tears away until they were both calm. Then they would settle into bed, holding each other as close as humanly possible. Billy bore scars, more scars than should have been healthy, but slowly, Steve was healing those scars.

*****

A small part of Steve had been afraid that the mind flayer had taken away the parts of Billy that had drawn him in in the first place. Half of him thought he would still love Billy without those qualities, but the other half wasn’t so sure. Because Billy wasn’t himself when he wasn’t being a sarcastic asshole.

But the more Steve got to know this new, post mind flayer Billy, the more he realized that this was who Billy had really been all along. 

This was Billy when he wasn’t rabid. This was Billy free of abuse and a life of fear.

When Steve had met Billy, he’d been like an abused dog, his only two options to cower or fight. And Billy was tired of cowering. He was tired of backing down. So he fought. And he fought fiercely. He went for the throat every time. 

But now Billy didn’t have to fight. He didn’t have to be scared.

And Steve had determined he liked this Billy better. 

Billy was still an asshole. He was still sarcastic and sometimes irritating as hell. But this Billy was funny and silly. This Billy wore his emotions on his sleeve because he was no longer afraid of being attacked for them.

This Billy told Steve he loved him every time he got the chance. This Billy kissed Steve anytime and anywhere. This Billy pulled Steve to sit in his lap just because he could.

This Billy teased his sisters and pulled their hair and made fun of them like any good big brother. But this Billy also made them their favorite foods when they didn’t feel good. This Billy changed the channel for them if something was on that they wanted to watch, even if he did hold the remote above his head and make them work for it first. This Billy held Caroline through every anxiety attack and petted Max’s hair when she broke into tears because homework and school were so frustrating.

Billy smacked Lucas, Dustin, and Mike around. He gave Lucas all kinds of hell when he and Max were dating and gave him even more hell when he did something stupid to make her break up with him. He teased Mike about his hair and Dustin about his poor taste in women. A mormon Dustin really. He also gave Dustin all kinds of hell for the song. “Ya know if you and the mormon hadn’t stopped to sing fucking  _ Never Ending Story _ I might now have ended up dead. You ever think of that shit head?” But this Billy took them outside and taught them how to work on cars because all three of these boys needed a strong male figure in their lives dammit. And he loved Steve ut that poor boy was hopeless with anything other than filling up the gas tank and checking the oil. This Billy taught them all to drive on Hawkins backroads in his beat up blue Camaro.

This Billy was like a second big brother to Will. He let Will tell him things that he was too afraid to tell Joyce or Jonathan. He told Will stories about growing up knowing he was gay, leaving some of the inappropriate details out because, “Little ears Billy.” This Billy told Will all of his tricks for getting guys to notice you. But this Billy also teased Will every time he saw a boy he thought was cute and his ears turned red. He always threatened to honk at them as they drove by until Will was screaming “No” and pounding his fists against Billy’s arms. He cackled from where he was waiting in the car the first time a boy asked Will to go get ice cream and Will stood for a solid minute just stuttering. But he also took Will home and helped him get ready because balance.

This Billy was happier than he’d ever been in his entire life. Steve was in awe of how much he’d changed. He told him as much one night when they were laying in bed. The kids had fallen asleep on the living room floor and they could hear the end credits of some movie rolling up the stairs.

“You’re like a butterfly,” Steve said sleepily from where his head was pillowed on Billy’s chest.

Billy was shirtless and Steve was using one finger to trace the still pink scar just under his right collar bone.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re like a butterfly. Ya know you started out as something, an asshole for instance. And then you went into the upside down, call it your cocoon. And when you came out you were something else, a slightly nicer asshole.”

“What I’m hearing is you calling me ugly.”

“No you were always pretty. Just now that you’re nicer you’re even prettier.”

“I’m still hearing ugly.”

“Nooooo,” Steve whine, slapping weakly at Billy’s chest. “It’s like you went through, you know whatever it is that caterpillars do?”

“Metamorphosis.”

“Yeah. That.”

“Dumbass,” Billy said fondly.

“You’re different now.”

“Good different?”

“Yeah good different.”

“Good.”

Billy settled his cheek against the top of Steve’s head.

“You still called me ugly.”

“Oh shut up.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed. Make sure to leave comments and kudos if that's something you like to do. I'm also on Tumblr. Feel free to leave prompts of just come hang out.
> 
> Click [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/strxngehxrringrove) to check out my blog


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